


there descends a bridge of light

by acertainheight



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9429803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertainheight/pseuds/acertainheight
Summary: Isabela doesn't believe in ghosts, but she's never stopped believing in Hawke.





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt. thrown together quickly in the middle of being completely devoured by writer's block and not a minute of free time, just trying to turn out _something_ ;_; someday i'll get unfinished things finished.

Isabela grew up on stories that smudged the lines between this world and the next: the clustered old women in the market who claimed to hear voices from beyond, who'd tell you anything you wanted to hear for a coin or two; the glassy-eyed crone who could barely walk under the weighty amulets of her gods and goddesses, always spitting prophesies in an unfamiliar tongue; and her mother, who would drag her jagged nail along the lines of her daughter's palm and give her the same warnings every time. _Y_ _ou're in for big trouble, mija, big trouble._

The stories were her bread and water, all that nourished her imagination in a time and a place where there was nothing else for her. At six years old, she stood in the surf with her feet and her arms outstretched, and prayed to be across the sea and far away. She had believed with all the ferocity of a child that someone was listening.

And then Luis came to take her across the water, and he took everything from her. She left all her faith and superstition and joy on the shores of Rivain, in the village that taught her to believe only to cast her out to sea. She traded the divine for heavy hands on her wrists and sour curses spat into her skin; she traded prayer for a knife in her boot and legs that ached to run.

Sixteen years have passed since then. Nearly half her life. Sixteen years, and in all that time, the only thing she ever learned to believe in was herself.

Until she met Hawke.

In Hawke, Isabela at last found a place she could rest her belief. And she believed in Hawke from that very first crooked smile, that first crowing laugh, the first time Hawke drew a blade at Isabela's side without asking once for the explanation she couldn't give. Hawke believed in Isabela so wildly and foolishly—no matter how many times Isabela fell short of Hawke's belief, be it inches or miles—that Isabela couldn't help but return it with the same recklessness. She would have trusted Hawke with her life from the very start. The first time she cornered Hawke in the alley behind the tavern and kissed her (drunk on cheap ale and something dangerously like love), all the belief she kept tight in her chest flowed out of her to make its home in Hawke.

Before either of them knew it, Isabela, too, had made her home in Hawke. That was why she couldn't stop coming back, no matter how many times she tried to run. She got furthest the second time: she managed to leave Kirkwall far behind, and long enough that she nearly thought she'd escaped for good. But she left every last fragment of herself back behind the city walls—and by the time she figured that out, she was so hollowed out that there was hardly anything left of her. There was nothing to do but go home.

When she stepped back into Hawke's arms for the first time, everything she'd spent those years throwing away filled her right back up again. Hawke had been waiting, of course, her faith almost incomprehensible to everyone—Isabela most of all. But she had welcomed Isabela back like she'd never been gone: with laughter, a warm embrace, and a stolen bottle of wine. They'd sat by the dock, their hands tangled in knots and Isabela's heart burning through her chest, and she'd spent the better part of an hour trying to hoarsely explain why it took her three years to come home.

“It doesn't matter,” Hawke had interrupted her finally, low and steady. “I love you.” And then her face had lit up with that dizzying smile: “It wouldn't kill you to say it back, by the way.”

Isabela said it then, and then again, until she could hardly stop saying it. On the battlefield, back to back; in Hawke's bed on lazy mornings, clothed in nothing but sunlight through the windows; every time Hawke turned those ocean-deep eyes on her and asked her to have faith. Her belief in Hawke was bone-deep. With it came love to match.

Isabela believed in Hawke. She believed in Hawke with everything in her. Hawke, who laughed and fought and drank like she was invincible, who wrapped Isabela in long limbs and vowed to do anything, _anything_ for her. She didn't need any gods, not Hawke's and not her own. She didn't need anyone, because she had Hawke.

*

Sometimes, back when she'd dabbled in optimism, Isabela had imagined what it would be like to grow old with Hawke at her side. She'd laughed with Hawke over the story their lives would make: they'd go out in fire and lightning, a blaze of triumphant glory, perhaps in the most fearsome naval battle ever had—or possibly with their pants around their ankles in the back of a bar. But Hawke was Hawke, and she always grinned and kissed Isabela's forehead and painted a different picture. A small home on the coast, somewhere quiet and peaceful _—after the little ones are grown, at least_ , Hawke said once, which was so guilelessly unexpected that Isabela was too startled to object. Instead of horror, it planted the smallest seed of delight in her chest, a seed that slowly bloomed each time she pictured some scrappy blue-eyed terror of a child running muddy laps through Hawke's imagined garden.

 _We'll go old and happy and together,_ Hawke said, her smile bright enough to burn the macabre right out of the topic of death. _Holding hands, probably. Or naked in the bath._

Old and happy and together. It wasn't a bad plan, really. It was nice. More than enough.

But of course, Hawke's death was never going to be like that.

Not Hawke. She always had to make the biggest show out of everything. She always had to do everything _first_ , the competitive little shit.

She always had to do the right thing.

*

Isabela wasn't there.

She was across the city, fighting her way to Hawke through the disaster that had spent the last however-many years threatening to devour Kirkwall—through fire and smoke and chaos like she'd never seen. At her side, Fenris suggested that perhaps Hawke had already made her escape to the appointed meeting place at the edge of the city. But Isabela knew better; she knew that Hawke would be right at the heart of the fight until the fight was won or someone dragged her away by her ankle. That was Hawke. Saving her own skin never would have been enough.

She'd known she would find Hawke. That much was certain. But she hadn't expected to find her like that: with a bolt through her skull and a gash in her chest. When Aveline staggered through the haze of smoke right into Isabela and Fenris's path, Hawke was already nothing but a ragged load in the guard captain's arms.

Aveline didn't have to say a word. Standing there in the burning alley, Isabela retched four times before Fenris could tear her away. He hauled her through the streets—her whole body shaking uncontrollably, her feet dragging limply against the stones of the road—two steps behind Aveline, Hawke's body silhouetted in front of her all the way. It was Varric who somehow got her up onto the ship while Fenris threatened the crew into action, and it was Merrill who collapsed beside her to weep together.

Later, with the city burning on the horizon behind them, a red-eyed Aveline tried to explain how Hawke had been so brave—of course, of _course_ she had been so brave—how she'd fought through the crowds all alone, throwing caution to the wind as she charged after her friends. She'd saved them, Aveline said. Of course. But all Isabela could do was stare at Hawke's blood still painted a vibrant red across Aveline's chest and hands. She couldn't look any of them in the eyes. She couldn't stop thinking about stupid, brave, brilliant Hawke hurling herself into the fray to save their lives. She knew with cold, shameful certainty that there was something broken inside of her, something deeply wrong with her—but she would have traded all their lives to have Hawke back beside her. She would have traded the whole world.

Isabela stumbled to shore at the first port in Rivain. By the time they'd made it that far, she'd said and done enough to ensure that no one followed her.

*

She coped the only way she knew how: bottles of the cheapest dark liquor she could get her hands on, bare-knuckled barfights that left her bruised and bloody and grateful for some small thing that made her feel alive, and long drunken nights with her hand rough between her legs and sob after sob tearing a wider hole in her chest. She wept her way through winter and she wept her way through spring. When summer came, she was too dried out to cry a minute longer. She poured all that energy back into drinking.

The first time it happened, she was sickeningly drunk and sprawled out on the cold planks of the dirtiest room in the cheapest inn in the shittiest town that side of Ferelden. It started with a vise-grip around her chest that tore the breath out of her and made stars flicker on the ceiling. As the pressure built on top of her chest and the breath stuck in her throat, it occurred to Isabela that she was about to die. It scared her more than she'd ever imagined.

“Hawke,” she croaked, the word burning a path out of her mouth, the first time she'd dared to say it ever since the flight from Kirkwall one long year before. It was the only sound she could squeeze out. Her hands shook; her heart beat against her ribs, feeling ready to explode. “Hawke, Hawke, Hawke.”

The wind tore through the room, set the windows to creaking and beat the shutters against the walls. Hot tears traced down her cheeks unbidden.

“Hawke,” she gasped, each breath feeling like it would split her chest in two, “I don't want to die alone.” The sob that had been threatening to tear out of her finally burst out, half a laugh and half a cry: “I don't want to die drunk on the floor, Hawke, not without you.”

Again the wind whipped through the room; again Isabela sobbed out the name she'd tried so hard to escape. The pain in her chest bubbled to a crescendo. The floor shook and spun beneath her—and then it ground to a halt.

She felt cool hands on her forehead, lips tender against hers. Calloused fingertips brushed her hair back behind her ears and stroked her cheek, and the tightness of her chest dissolved into—

Peace. Isabela's breath stopped, then steadied. “Hawke,” she said again, softer. Long arms drew her close to a warm, solid chest. Lips grazed her cheek and her jaw. And when she awoke, alone and aching and very much alive on the inn floor, the room smelled of whiskey and lavender—and the last traces of laughter echoed off the beams above her head.

*

The second time was nearly identical. The third time was the same: just enough to rip her wine-soaked heart out. The fourth time, Isabela was so bloody sober that she felt more sick than if she were drunk: her head pounding, her whole body tense, so hyper-aware of every sound and smell that clarity turned into confusion. She sat in the dirt, deep in the middle of nowhere where she imagined not even the most persistent hallucination could haunt her, and hugged her knees tight against her chest as her little fire blazed on.

When the fire died down to embers and the moon hung high in the sky, Isabela took a deep breath and unwound her limbs. She cleared her throat once, then twice. And then she tentatively put her sanity to the test.

“Hawke,” she called out, feeling embarrassed even with no one to hear her. She cleared her throat again. “Hawke,” she tried, more firmly this time.

Nothing happened. Isabela gritted her teeth and wondered what she was doing here, why she wasn't here with a drink, and why she was so stupid that she thought the imagined hands of a dead woman might follow her here _without_ a drink. She should have known better. Once upon a time she'd been a child who believed in the unseen, who dared to hope that there was something more than life and death. But now she was a woman drinking away her mind, and that was going to have to be enough.

She crawled into her bedroll, still seething with frustration and fury, and shut her eyes. And then the wind came whistling through the trees. A familiar laugh seemed to dance through the clearing, bouncing off the rocks and trunks, high above her. And the rustling treetops called out, loud and careless and so familiar that Isabela's twisted-up heart crumbled to dust inside her chest: _Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm late!_

Isabela could barely bring herself to breathe at the sound of that voice—as alive as any sound she'd ever heard. When she finally raised her own voice, it cracked with the sorrow trying to claw its way out of her. “We're even, then, aren't we?”

The trees went momentarily silent before warm hands cupped Isabela's cheeks and gentle thumbs wiped hot tears away. _You were right on time. You couldn't have done anything._

She's lying, Isabela thought, grief spidering out across her chest. She's lying. They'd always fought better beside each other, unstoppable whenever they were together. The ache of guilt crushed all the cynicism right out of her. “You shouldn't have been alone.”

 _Nobody ought to be alone._ Hawke's hands ran through her hair, down her back, and drew her close into an embrace so real that Isabela felt sick. When she reached out, she could feel a body warm beneath her hands.

“I know,” Isabela managed. “I know. We need each other. Don't go anywhere.”

 _I love you,_ Isabela heard, the voice right beside her. Warm laughter rang out right against her: _And it wouldn't kill you to say it back._

“I love you,” Isabela breathed. She couldn't remember the last time she said it out loud, and she tried it again, her voice hoarse and crackling, tears spilling out again: “Oh, you goose, you know I love you. You knew. You didn't have to come all this way for that.”

 _D'you miss me_?

“You know I do, sweet thing. You know—”

 _Then won't you find me?_ Hawke's voice drifted up to the ceiling of stars above them, fading out into only the lingering smell of her skin. _Won't you come find me, wherever I am?_

_*_

Hawke came back wherever Isabela went, whenever she called her name. And as the year passed, Hawke started to arrive without ever being called—blown in on the north wind, arriving in a cloud of laughter, always ready to wrap herself tight around Isabela no matter where she was.

 _Come on,_ Hawke begged again and again. _Come on and find me, won't you?_

Isabela would have torn her heart out of her chest and made an offering of it to any god that would reveal the map to Hawke. She would have eviscerated herself, offered her own blood up for ink. But all she could do was plead with the empty air in front of her. “Where are you?” she asked again and again. No answer came.

 _I'm not here,_ Hawke finally said one night, her hands on Isabela's shoulder and her lips against her ear in a crowded bar, both of them staring down at a game of Wicked Grace. _I mean, come on, aren't you even trying? What would I be doing in some shithole in Rivain?_

“Interrupting me,” Isabela said aloud, as naturally as if Hawke stood right there. Every head at the table lifted to stare at her.

 _Embarrassing you, too,_ Hawke suggested, her voice warm with the familiar unabashed amusement that Isabela was half-certain was the only joy she would ever be able to feel again. She dropped her cards onto the table and hastily stumbled out of her seat, out of the tavern, and back into the street with Hawke's laughter dancing in her head. It was easier than trying to explain the entire backstory of her creeping insanity to a group of drunken strangers.

“Where are you?” she shouted up at the sky, loud enough that more than a few heads turned her way. Her voice grew shrill, almost unrecognizable to her own ears: “Where the fuck are you?”

Hands on her shoulders turned her around, aimed her towards the docks across the city. _I don't know,_ Hawke said, low and melancholy; she buried her face in Isabela's neck and cradled her close. _I don't know. I need you to find me. Nobody ought to be alone._

Not for the first time, Isabela tried to imagine what might come with death. Hawke had never been devout, but she'd stopped laughing about the Fade when she'd returned from dealing with that boy; Isabela hadn't been there, but she had never been able to forget the deep-seated darkness in Hawke's eyes for days, unnerving enough that Isabela hadn't dared pry for details. It's not right, Hawke had said once—it's not a place for a person to be.

If that was where Hawke was, Isabela thought now, all alone and terrified and desperately trying to cling to the edges of this world, that was where she ought to be. With her. Pissing away eternity together, thumbing their noses at the Maker if His Divine Prickishness wouldn't let them through into whatever came next.

But she couldn't quite bring herself to believe in that, to _hope_ for the mercy of the afterlife. Here, alive and alone and barely holding on to herself—she knew Hawke was here. She could believe in Hawke: Hawke and nothing else. And even if this was all in her head, at least that was something. 

With Hawke there behind her, holding her tight, Isabela didn't have the faith or the foolishness to do anything other than walk towards the docks and the first ship out of Rivain.

*

“I don't believe in you,” Isabela told her one day, standing on the deck of the ship back to the Marches. The deck was almost empty: there was no one around, not this late at night, to hear Isabela addressing the starlit sky above. At her words, Hawke only laughed and kissed her so vividly that a chill tore down Isabela's spine.

_You don't have to believe in me for me to be here._

“You're dead.”

_No! Really? I remember eating something a bit off—_

“Don't get smart. I can't handle a funny ghost. Or hallucination.”

_I can't help it. I've always been funny._

“I'm trying to cope with losing my mind gracefully. All you're doing is making me more convinced that I've gone utterly insane.”

Hawke's hands ran down her arms to link their fingers together. It hadn't stopped terrifying Isabela, the certainty with which she felt those familiar hands wrapped around hers: she stared down at her hands on the rail, fingers curled up as if Hawke's really were there, and tried not to choke on the absurdity of it. Hawke squeezed her hands and brought her thoughts back to the moment. _Is it so bad for me to be here?_

“That's not the point. The point is,” Isabela said, tugging her hands out of Hawke's to jab at the rail of the ship for emphasis, “ghosts aren't real. Which means you're not real. I think that much is obvious.”

Hawke's laugh echoed all around her. _Is that really_ _obvious? You're not drunk. You're not insane, because I watched you cheat and rob the whole crew blind at Wicked Grace earlier. I'm talking to you. And I'm dead. Doesn't that limit our options?_

Isabela exhaled. She could picture Hawke there, her whole face alight with a smile as she counted explanations off on her fingers—the same smile that was burned onto the back of Isabela's eyelids, inescapable. “It scares the shit out of me when we have entire conversations, you know. You getting chattier is not a good sign for my sanity.”

So much for whispering winds and ominous questions, ambiguous touches and far-off laughter: Hawke turned more loquacious with every passing day, wanting to laugh and flirt and talk for hours, always with her hands achingly real on Isabela's skin. Isabela could feel every fingertip against her hips; she could run her thumb over Hawke's knuckles and feel that scar she got cutting onions, or the one on the back of her arm from a thrown blade barely dodged. She could turn around and bury her face into Hawke's chest, gently rising and falling, with no hint of a heartbeat. Some days she spent hours stroking Hawke's cheek, her jaw, her forehead, her chest, searching for the wounds that killed her. But there was nothing there, and instead Isabela would press her hands to that big scar on Hawke's stomach—the one Hawke got very nearly dying for Isabela—and weep into her shoulder. And all the while, Hawke would whisper words of adoration in her ear.

Arms wrapped around her waist. _Sorry. I can try and be spookier. Less talking, more mysteriously-moving objects._

Isabela buried her face in her hands. “You're going to drive me crazy. If I'm not already.”

_You're not crazy. I'm real._

That was, Isabela thought, exactly the sort of thing a grief-induced hallucination would say. “Are you a coping mechanism? Because you're doing a terrible job. I'm not coping very well at all.”

_You're not drunk on the floor. That's better._

“Thanks for noticing.”

Hawke's laugh rang out, and Isabela couldn't keep herself from smiling. It was true enough that she couldn't blame drinking for Hawke now. She wasn't sure _what_ she could blame for Hawke. Grief, maybe. But lately, with Hawke so present beside her, her grief was as distant as it had ever been. As if the black knot of sorrow in her stomach grew smaller every time Hawke's laughter filled the air.

She leaned back into Hawke's hold and soaked in the feeling of Hawke's breath in her hair, Hawke's hands on her hips. Maybe, she thought, this didn't need an explanation. Maybe it was enough to believe that this _was_ Hawke, somehow. One way or another. Maybe it was enough to be grateful. She settled her hands over Hawke's and stared up at the constellations lighting up the sky.

In these moments, alone with Hawke and the stars and the sea, she could almost believe in something beyond them both.

But then, low and gentle, Hawke broke into her first cautious steps of faith:

_I have to go. Just for the night._

“What? Why?” Isabela's voice cracked despite herself; she couldn't keep the childish petulance out of her tone. She could have spent a lifetime there, watching the stars crawl over the sky and illuminate the sea with Hawke beside her. It had been all she ever wanted, really: the two of them with their feet on the deck and the whole world before them, chasing that horizon. It had seemed like such a small thing. Not too much to ask for. How cruel it was, she thought, to have that ripped away from her not once but every night.

All she wanted was for Hawke to stay, even if it was like this—even if it was more memory than truth, whether she was losing her mind or not. But Hawke's arms unwound from around her and the cold night breeze blew across the deck. “Why?” Isabela tried again, louder, pleading.

 _I don't know. But I can't stay._ Lips brushed against Isabela's. _Come find me._

*

She should have known that it would end like this. It wasn't the first time she'd fled Kirkwall only to end up right back where she started; it wasn't even the second time. But even as she'd followed the voice of a dead woman all across Thedas, spending every last coin she had on fares and bribes to get her here, she hadn't quite been able to imagine walking into Kirkwall again. It hadn't felt real until she reached the very end of her journey and stood in what had to be the darkest, dirtiest street in the city, staring at an unmarked door. The door was black with smoke, crooked on its hinges; it looked like a safehouse, she thought, a refuge for those brave or naive enough to try and rebuild the city even in the midst of disaster. She didn't need Hawke nudging her towards the door to know who might be on the other side.

“I can't,” Isabela said. She let out a shudder of an exhalation and wrapped her arms around her chest. “I can't do it. You can't make me do it.”

_You have to. Nobody ought to be alone._

Isabela's shoulders stiffened. “You. You shouldn't be alone. And we have each other again now. Isn't that what this was all about?”

 _Oh,_ Hawke said, sounding surprised. _Isabela. I'm not alone. Don't worry about me. I have my family here. And I'll be waiting for you when it's time._

The breath rushed out of her like she'd just taken a blow to the chest. Only Hawke's quick hands kept her standing. “You're going to go away, then.”

_I have to. But I promise I'm here, too. It's just a matter of knowing where to look._

Isabela swallowed. She could feel humiliating tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, a reminder of the grief she'd only just been starting to forget. “I don't want a metaphor. That's not enough.”

_Don't you think you're ready?_

“Not to say goodbye.”

Hawke stepped around her to draw her into an embrace, tugging Isabela into her, swaying there together on the stoop. She pressed one tender kiss to Isabela's forehead, and then she stepped away. _But aren't you glad we got the chance?_

Hawke's hand lifted Isabela's in hers, brought it to rap against the door once and then twice.

The door creaked open, and in the same moment, Hawke's hold on Isabela loosened and then—with a breath of air—faded into nothing.

The crack of the door widened to reveal a face not-quite-familiar, like something Isabela had dreamed up in a different life. The same red hair, the same fierce freckles, maybe a few more lines at the corners of those green eyes—and then it struck her that the unsettling part was the affection in Aveline's eyes, so strong that Isabela could hardly remember why she'd been expecting fury in the first place.

“You came home,” Aveline said. And then, slowly: “She told us you would come home.”

“Oh,” Isabela said, feeling certain that she was about to faint right there on Aveline's doorstep. She took an unsteady breath. “Well, she—I mean, she _made_ me do it.”

Aveline stepped out from the doorway to wrap Isabela in the first solid embrace she'd received in what felt like a lifetime. From around her, the others came pouring out: Varric and then Merrill and then Fenris, even Donnic, and then two barely-toddling red-headed boys who hurled themselves into the embrace like she was something other than a stranger. They were an avalanche crashing over her, wrapping her up in warm, steady _love._

Standing there, with their arms all tight around her, Isabela heard a peal of laughter echoing off the buildings, off the city walls, climbing up, up, up into the stars for the very last time.


End file.
